By Freddy Mutoda
The most unfortunate reality in Zimbabwe today is when Jonathan Moyo coughs, the media in Zimbabwe contracts some virus.
Give the devil his due, the professor has a perchance for steering up the hornet’s nest and most times, shows some reckless bravado that is working well to destroy Zanu PF from within as claimed by other ruling party officials.
But at times Moyo is so loudmouthed you wonder if he ever has space in his memory to remember today, what he would have said yesterday.
After hogging headlines with the “political banter” hogwash, Moyo went on to make a storm out of a tea cup over President Robert Mugabe’s alleged $30 million debt to Ray Kaukonde before trying to link Nigerian journalists who “harassed” Mugabe on his overstay in political office to Boko Haram before “warning” former vice president Joice Mujuru about her impending arrest.
Moyo is assuming the role of a super minister, government spokesperson, presidential spokesperson, Zanu PF spokesperson, police spokesperson, spokesperson for the Attorney General, Prosecutor General, Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), and indeed spokesperson for everyone in the country.
It is evident in all his comments on stories in the media that Moyo suffers from some illusory superiority, thinking that he knows everything, has an answer to every question to the extent he has exposed his naivety most of the times when his outlandish claims have been proven to be inaccurate and naive — remember the issue of spot fines?
In trying to rubbish Mujuru’s statement about her vision for the country, Moyo naively assumes that divergence and deviance are the same and in trying to justify Mujuru’s expulsion, he wants to sell a self-serving argument that since Mujuru had divergent vision on where the country should go, she was therefore devious and justifiably expelled.
But we all have divergent views and what makes us a people together is our ability to live harmoniously despite the diversity of our thoughts, culture and the way we do things.
And I am sure today, that Moyo has, like everyone else in Zanu PF, divergent views from Mugabe’s that is the reason why he was there, with George Charamba and Patrick Chinamasa announcing the suspension of civil servants’ bonuses when Mugabe thought otherwise.
It is not a secret that because Mujuru has outlined her vision for the country, and that the vision is different from Zanu PF’s, she is most likely going to find support in whatever role she would want to play in making sure that her vision for this country is realised.
That Moyo thinks Mujuru’s vision has no grounding in reality shows that he did not understand Mujuru’s pay-off line, that “What is impossible with man is possible with God” and the Bible tells us to pursue our dreams, our visions because, “as a man thinketh in his heart (vision), so shall he be”.
So it is allowed for Mujuru to dare to dream, Cde Professor, and as Martin Luther King, she has a dream, a dream of a Zimbabwe that respects the rule of law, property rights, a dream of a Zimbabwe where its people freely associate, are safe to hold divergent views and to contribute to the governance of their country, a Zimbabwe where all are equal before the law and have equal opportunities to enjoy the fruits that this country avails to its citizenry.
It is common knowledge, that everything that stands established today, was a vision and only a dream some day in the past. Even what we call a human being was once a mental concept in the mind of God. What we call an aeroplane was once a “ridiculous” idea in someone’s mind so Mujuru can dare to dream of a Zimbabwe that she wants and that is the beginning of bigger things for this country.
But all the time Moyo has taken to criticising a story or pronouncement, he does that for selfish reasons, trying to safeguard political turf that he thinks only belongs to Zanu PF.
With Mujuru, Moyo declared at a Sapes Trust nocturnal meeting sometime ago that he, and Kasukuwere were working to make sure that she “would be down forever and never resurrect” and the systematic attacks on Mujuru now, ranging from intrusions at her farm, withdrawal of benefits and current threats of arrest by the government spokesperson are part of the cocktail of efforts that Moyo and his cabal are trying to employ to “decimate Mujuru”.
What has changed today, barely two weeks after Moyo himself said all these allegations were mere “political banter”?
Rugare Gumbo has warned that Moyo and Kasukuwere’s threats — that they were working to make sure Mujuru “would be down forever and never resurrect” — were littered with “serious death connotations and that recent events at her farm are beginning to suggest the two are up to some mischief.
But Mujuru is not the only one under attack from Moyo as we have witnessed during the past weeks.
Moyo’s control of the media in the country allows him to do agenda-setting especially in the public media where, by virtue of him being the appointing officer, he dictates what editors include and exclude in their news, at least according to Goodson Nguni.
This “privilege” recently enabled him to breathe controversy into a story published by a local publication and suddenly a tired story about President Robert Mugabe owing Ray Kaukonde some money, just like the Harare East by-election, became the centre of a storm as has become fashionable with the rabid Zanu PF succession wars.
Interestingly, what became a big casus-belli for a big media war was some information first broken by war veterans who demonstrated as a result of Grace Mugabe’s so-called “political banter” on Kaukonde last year.
The debt story whether true or false exposed that factionalism is very much alive in Zanu PF.
It is interesting to note that the Herald chose to disclose the “secondary source” but saw it prudent to protect the primary source.
What is it with the primary source that the Herald is afraid of, to the extent of not disclosing it when it was at liberty disclosing the so-called secondary source.
There is something that is intricate and exciting about this Nguni-Moyo fallout which goes beyond the Mugabe/Kaukonde issue.
This is where succession politics comes in. No other explanation is befitting. Why would Moyo feel the fact that Mugabe owes Kaukonde damages the president’s image when Mugabe himself, during his wife’s graduation party revealed that he owed banks?
After Nguni had called a press conference and took a jibe at Moyo alleging that he wanted to destroy Zanu PF from within, Moyo betrays the whole plan behind the Nguni attacks when he savaged Nguni on twitter, calling him “a pro-VP Mnangagwa” secessionist and part of “unprincipled opportunists bent on creating a competing centre of power!”
Moyo’s twitter remarks made it clear that of the four in whom Mugabe is alleged to have confided his debt situation with Kaukonde, Moyo suspects Mnangagwa is the primary source who gave Nguni the information on which the Mugabe debt story was based.
Then if Mnangagwa is successfully drawn into the hullabaloo the attacks on Nguni have a double effect of making him an unworthy confidant to the president therefore unworthy to succeed him while at the same time setting up Nguni with the president so that even if Nguni succeeds in the ACC public interviews held at parliament last week, the president might not pick him from the list of 12 that the parliament forwards to him to choose nine ACC commissioners.
The fight for the control of the ACC has become as important as the succession battle itself and it has shown that it is an institution that can be used to fight political turf battles.
In a letter to Mnangagwa published in the media recently, some ACC investigation and intelligence officers inadvertently disclosed how embedded in Zanu PF politics the organisation is.
The letter clearly shows that a clique within the ACC is aligned to the VP and therefore seeks to criminalise any requests for investigations of persons aligned to him.
It is interesting to note that the ACC investigators, rather than work to expose corruption and help in the prosecution of offenders, have become public relations managers for both the government and corrupt chefs within it.
The desperate, officers foolishly retort that “If nothing is done about this matter very soon (allegations that Mujuru wanted Mnangagwa investigated), they (Mujuru group) will accomplish their mission by using our hostile enemies to publish damaging allegations against the party and government,” the letter added.
So it is true that the ACC has “damaging allegations” against Mnangagwa and his faction that the investigators are keeping to themselves and never investigating since the investigations would damage Zanu PF and government? What a shame!
This is where the story is. Succession politicians in Zanu PF are fighting to control the ACC and the likes of Moyo seem not to like that Nguni is among those who might end up at the commission.
There is a lot at stake and a lot of corrupt deals, at Zinara, those involving the indigenisation of fuel companies, diamond money, the awarding of tenders to dualise Airport Road, the importation of fertilizer mixed with sand sold to unsuspecting farmers, the sale of vast pieces of land in Mashonaland Central for 48 cents and the improper acquisition of residential stands in Helensvale are some of the cases involving high profile politicians and the ACC has been sitting on these dockets for long.
Such dockets become effective arsenal depending on the hands in which they fall into thus the fight for the control of the ACC becomes very important in succession politics in Zimbabwe.
But if there is a pathetic lot, it is those ACC investigators who are foolish enough to acknowledge they are there to defend Zanu PF and government by not investigating corrupt officials.
So Moyo is at work, attack Nguni (Mnangagwa) and control the ACC, after all Eddison Zvobgo once said “ukaona munhu achirova chipopi chako padoro anenge achitsvaga iwe” (If you see someone attacking your sidekick, they are after your head). Daily News